


You Get What You Give

by blue_pointer



Series: A Glorious Retelling [45]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Artagan - Freeform, Bad Feyries, Bad News, Bath Sex, Canon Timeline, Close Calls, Cuddling & Snuggling, Don't copy to another site, Episode: c01e064 The Frigid Doom, Fluff, Foot Massage, Gilmore x Vax, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Metallic Dragon!Gilmore, Oranges, POV Vax, Pampering, Possessive Behavior, Sneaking Around, Snogging, Vax x Gilmore, Vaxmore, Worry, guess who?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 02:06:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28823433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_pointer/pseuds/blue_pointer
Summary: In which Vax learns what Gilmore has been through and is a good boyfriend.
Relationships: Shaun Gilmore/Vax'ildan
Series: A Glorious Retelling [45]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1975831
Comments: 10
Kudos: 19





	You Get What You Give

After his intense heart to heart talk with Percy in the mausoleum-turned-temple, Vax made his way back into town. And it occurred to him: they had a single night before they were to set off again toward what might be their doom (as per usual). And there was someone he could only see when they were in Whitestone. Someone who’d practically begged Vax to come home and visit him. Someone who’d almost single-handedly saved the city this morning. 

Gilmore had said he was fine, but he was absolutely not fine. Vax had not seen him look less fine except when he’d nearly died in Emon. That thought quickened his step, and he made a beeline for Gilmore’s house. Gilmore was no doubt too tired for anything they had both threatened to do to one another the next time Vax was back in Whitestone. But if nothing else, Vax could spend some time with Gilmore and perhaps sleep over for some quality spooning. It seemed the least he could do after all Gilmore had done for him and the city. 

Because he was a rogue and frankly could not help himself, Vax entered the house through the unlocked front door in stealth mode, and snuck around the house to see what he could see. Unfortunately--or perhaps fortunately-- there wasn’t much. Just a bored-looking young person in cleric’s robes sitting in an uncomfortable chair in the hall, and Gilmore alone in his workroom, muttering over a crossbow. 

Vax snuck up behind him and covered Gilmore’s eyes with his hands. “Guess who,” he whispered. 

To his disappointment, Gilmore did not seem surprised by any of this. He set the crossbow on his workbench, and pretended to think. “Is it...the Cinder King?” 

Vax snorted a laugh. “No.” 

“A rakish highwayman, come to rob and seduce me?”

“Warmer.” Vax smiled. 

“Well, the only other person who ever comes to visit me is Jarett…”

“That’s not funny,” Vax said, taking his hands away. 

Gilmore turned and hooked an arm around his waist, pulling Vax close with a smile. “But it’s so fun to tease you.” 

Vax was not mollified, but it was nice to be held by Gilmore. Sitting together in the tavern earlier had been the most contact they’d had in days. He leaned down and kissed Gilmore’s cheek. “I missed you.” 

Gilmore sighed, laying his head against Vax’s chest. “And I missed you, my darling. I was so worried.” When he looked up at Vax, dark rings were visible under his lovely gold-lined eyes. 

Vax bit his lip. “You mean because you didn’t hear from me for three days?” Of course Vax felt guilty. He should have noticed Garmelie’s theft sooner. 

“Well...only partly, my love. Did you not get my message about the archfey?” 

“Archfey?” Vax echoed. “What’s that?” 

Gilmore sighed, hiding his face against Vax, tired. He must have really screwed up this time. Vax cupped Gilmore’s face and gently curled fingers around to rub the nape of Gilmore’s neck. “You know I can be stupid sometimes. What did I do?” 

“It’s not what you did, my love,” Gilmore said, tipping his chin to look up at Vax. “It was that horrid creature. After I left you that night...did it remain with you? I hope it did not. I would not put it past that one to sabotage your quest--or worse.” 

“Who?” Horrid creature? “Do you mean Garmelie?” Vax shrugged. “Well, he didn’t help us much, but he left once we crossed the Gilded Run. The thing is...I realized after he’d left...he stole my paper. The one you gave me.” 

“Gods.” Gilmore rubbed his brow, looking the way he did when he was having one of his headaches. 

“I’m sorry,” Vax said, dreading Gilmore’s disappointment. “I didn’t know he was that good a thief. And when he revealed himself after we’d defeated Saundor--well, I was distracted.” 

“So it did reveal itself?” Gilmore asked, looking up at him again. 

Vax nodded. “Yes. Percy said he’d suspected all along--whatever that means--but I really just thought he was a little faun. We should have listened to your advice better.” This apparently wasn’t the right answer, because Gilmore put his face in his hands. “I’m sorry. I tried to contact you--when I found the paper missing--but I guess you couldn’t hear me. Could you?” 

Gilmore shook his head. “It must have been blocking me.” He groaned. “And it had my parchment that whole time. No wonder it wrote back.”

“Wrote back? Who did? Garmelie--I mean Artagan?” 

Gilmore looked up suddenly, and Vax could see fear in his eyes, which was rare. “Artagan?” He blinked. “That was Artagan? Of the Morncrown?” Gilmore put his hands to his temples, looking stunned. 

“You know him?” Vax asked, confused. “The Morncrown? What is that?”

Gilmore leaned forward on the workbench on his elbows, still clutching his head, and began to laugh. But it wasn’t Gilmore’s usual laugh; Vax could tell something was wrong. It sounded almost hysterical. Just as it became more sob than laugh, Gilmore stopped abruptly. He produced a kerchief and dabbed his eyes. “Leave it to Vox Machina to encounter a legendary archfey on your first journey into the Feywild.” 

“Legendary?” Vax asked. He didn’t see what the big deal was. Yes, Artagan was a thief, but he hadn’t really hurt them. In fact, he’d helped pull Vex out of the river. 

Gilmore sighed heavily. “If all it did to you was take your parchment, then...you were very lucky.” 

Vax reached out to tentatively run a hand down Gilmore’s back, trying to be reassuring. “Look, I’m fine.” He leaned down, so that Gilmore could see he was. “I’m sorry you were worried. Everything worked out in the end.” He kissed Gilmore’s ear cuff. “I was upset when I found out he’d stolen from me, but. That was really it, apart from some lewd drawings he did of the two of us. He must have been spying on us…”

Gilmore finally took his hands away from his face, and his eyemakeup was smudged. “Yes, it was. It seemed to find us...very inspiring.” 

“How do you know?” Vax asked. 

Gilmore took a deep breath before looking at Vax. “Because it tried to keep me.” 

“He what? You mean he came here?” Vax asked.

“No.” Gilmore smiled unhappily and shook his head. “And that’s one good thing in all of this. Artagan was banished to the Feywild, sealed away from the other worlds for angering the gods. So it can’t come here. Thankfully.” 

“Sealed away by the gods?” Vax found that hard to believe. Was that why he’d wanted a Threshold Crest from Syngorn so badly? 

Gilmore shook his head, staring at the workbench. “It’s very dangerous. I tried to warn you--but it was already too late. It took away our means of communication.” Gilmore glanced at him, reaching for Vax’s hand and squeezing it. “I’m just glad you’re alright.” 

“Wait,” Vax said, hooking a nearby stool with his boot and dragging it over so that he could sit on it. “What do you mean he tried to keep you? You mean ‘keep you’ like ‘Peter, Peter pumpkin eater’?” 

Gilmore shook his head. “I can’t speak to its plan. But it caught me on my way back here and...well, it seemed to have no intentions of letting me go.” 

“He did what?!” Vax nearly fell off his stool. “But how--?!” Scanlan had trapped Artagan inside Otiluke’s Resilient Sphere. There was no way Artagan was strong enough to hold Gilmore. Unless...unless he’d just _pretended_ to be caught by Scanlan. 

And then Vax remembered something strange Garmelie had said when they’d stolen his sketchbook: ‘Give me back my dragon.’ If the dragon was meant to be Gilmore...did that mean the little bastard really had thought Gilmore was his? “Well, what--? Did he hurt you?” Vax cupped Gilmore’s face in concern. “Is that why you look so tired? Should we go back to the Feywild and kill him? Grog already threatened to...”

“Stop.” Gilmore gripped Vax’ildan’s arms. “Do not go after him. Ever. Promise me.”

This did not sound like a promise Vax would be able to keep. “But--”

“No buts,” Gilmore said. “You are not to return to the Feywild under any circumstances, and certainly not to try to kill a demi-god.” 

“He tried to kidnap you and I’m supposed to just let that go?” Vax was angry. Clearly Gilmore had escaped, but that wasn’t the point. 

“We all made it back safely. So, yes. Leave Artagan there to its exile. There’s nothing worse any of us could do to it. Trust me,” Gilmore said. 

Vax didn’t like that. It didn’t sit well with him at all. But Gilmore looked so tired, so worried...almost scared. Vax leaned forward to hug him, squeezing Gilmore tightly. “I feel like I wasn’t there for you when I should have been.” 

Gilmore rubbed his elbow. “You didn’t know.” 

“I didn’t.” Vax said, looking up. “You could have disappeared forever, and I never would have known. Everyone in Whitestone might have died today because of our carelessness. Because we didn’t heed your warnings.” Vax could have lost Gilmore and not even known why. He hated that thought. He pulled Gilmore close, holding onto him as tightly as he could. “I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Gilmore told him. “It’s alright.” 

“It’s not alright!” Vax insisted. 

“We’re all fine,” Gilmore reassured him. “There’s nothing more to do.” 

“No,” Vax said. “There is something.” He left the room, and Gilmore could hear water running. After a few minutes, Vax reappeared in the doorway. “Tonight, I’m going to take care of you.” 

Gilmore raised an eyebrow. “Come on.” Vax held his hand out to Gilmore, gently tugging him out of the chair and walking him down the hall to the bath. “I’m going to light candles, and we’re going to soak together, and then I’ll rub your back, or make you dinner, or read you love poems, or make you come--anything you want for the rest of the night.”

“Vax’ildan,” Gilmore offered a tired smile. “Can you even cook?” 

“No,” Vax admitted, sheepishly. “But I can read. And...other things.” 

Gilmore took his face in both hands and kissed his forehead. “Just promise me one thing.” 

“Alright.” Vax nodded. 

“Don’t let me fall asleep. If I fall asleep, the barrier will break.” 

The implication dawned on Vax slowly. “You can’t sleep? The whole time the barrier is up, you can’t sleep? At all?” 

Gilmore shook his head no, and Vax threw himself at him, hugging Gilmore desperately. “My poor Gilmore.” 

“Yours, hmm?” Gilmore asked, stroking his back. 

“Better mine than Artagan’s, wouldn’t you say?” He looked up at Gilmore. 

“Every day of the year,” Gilmore said with relief. Vax smiled and left to look for candles. 

The bath went a little longer than Vax had anticipated. But strangely, the water never got cold. They did make quite a mess of the bathroom, though. Afterwards, Vax sat in the kitchen while Gilmore cooked dinner, the cleric hovering in the doorway awkwardly while Vax and Gilmore kept up a steady banter of innuendo. Before they ate, the cleric did a small healing ritual and left the room. “I thought you said you were alright,” Vax said accusingly. 

Gilmore focused on serving the food. “The barrier spell takes a lot out of me. They just help me keep going.” 

Vax put his hands on the table, watching Gilmore closely. “You need a healer to stay with you, just so that you can maintain the barrier?” 

Gilmore shrugged, still not looking at him. “It helps.” 

“Fine.” Vax rose from the table. “Then I’m your assigned healer for tonight.” He walked out to find the cleric to tell her she could go home. When he came back to the kitchen, Vax kissed Gilmore and cast Lay on Hands. 

“Hmm.” Gilmore smiled at him. “I like that.”

Vax tightened his arms around Gilmore’s waist. “There’s more where that came from, buddy.” 

Gilmore kissed him this time. “Tell me more.” 

A loud growl from Vax’s stomach interrupted their foreplay, and he hung his head. “Come on,” Gilmore chuckled, carrying their plates to the table. 

After dinner, they retired to the library in front of the fire, where Vax put aside poetry to rub Gilmore’s feet. Which evolved into...other activities. They lay together on the chaise afterwards, and Gilmore begged Vax to stop because he was tired. 

“But I’m supposed to keep you awake,” Vax said, grinning at him. 

“Not that part of me, my love,” Gilmore said, kissing him again. And Vax finally relented. 

“Well, what else will help you stay awake?” he asked. 

“I usually read,” Gilmore said, and Vax made a face. “Why don’t you tell me about what I missed in those three days we didn’t see one another?” 

So Vax did. Gilmore was especially interested in the story of Saundor. “Is Vex’ahlia alright?” he asked. “That must have been terrible for her.” 

“She did feel bad,” Vax said. “She kept saying maybe she should have just accepted his offer.” 

Gilmore shook his head. “He sounds like another very powerful archfey.”

That made Vax think. “Who do you suppose betrayed him? Was it Artagan?” 

“Oh, I doubt that,” Gilmore said. “But they must have known each other at some point. It seemed very interested in your adventure.” 

“I could tell Vex was really upset. But Percy talked to her.” Vax shook his head. “He clearly has designs on her. I’m not really sure how to feel about that.” 

Gilmore offered a lopsided smile. “Yes you are.”

“You’re right; I don’t like it. But Percival and I had an interesting chat earlier this evening, and. I don’t know. Maybe he can get better. He told me not to trust him. Which kind of makes me want to. A little.” 

“I would take him at his word, if I were you,” Gilmore said. “That may just be his way of warning you that he doesn’t trust himself.” 

“He’s so weird,” Vax said, crinkling his nose in distaste. 

“Indeed.” Gilmore drew Vax back into his embrace, kissing the tip of Vax’ildan’s ear. 

“You know what else is weird?” Vax asked. 

“Hmmm?” Was Gilmore even listening? His lips were kissing a line from Vax’ildan’s jaw down his neck, and Vax had to work to maintain his train of thought. 

“Garmelie didn’t draw you as a man. In those dirty sketches he made of us, he drew you as a dragon.” Gilmore’s lips froze on his neck. “Why would he do that?” 

Gilmore drew back, thinking. “Perhaps...as a mark of its interest? That I am something to be tamed?” 

Vax tightened his arms around Gilmore. “I’m still so damned angry about what he did.” 

“Shhhhh.” Gilmore stroked fingers up and down his back. “Everyone’s safe now.”

Vax snuggled against him. “I don’t like the thought of anyone taking you away.” He looked up at Gilmore. “I love you. You’re so important to me. To all of us.” 

“That’s very sweet,” Gilmore said, kissing him on the forehead. 

“I mean it,” Vax said. “Don’t overdo it with the barrier spell. I’d choose you over Whitestone if it came down to it.” 

“Vax, what a dreadful thing to say,” Gilmore replied. But Vax could tell he was secretly pleased. 

He turned, wrapping his arms around Gilmore's neck. “Kiss me, daddy.” But Vax didn’t wait for Gilmore to kiss him this time, snogging the daylights out of Gilmore to prove he meant what he’d said. Of course, snogging led to other things…

The sun was just beginning to turn the cloudy sky a lighter shade of gray when Vax pulled his clothes back on, wondering if it would start to rain on his walk back to the castle. “For you,” Gilmore said, holding out a second slip of arcane parchment. 

“I promise I won’t lose this one,” Vax said. 

“Remember,” Gilmore told him. “I can’t visit anymore, but we can still talk. I like to know that you’re safe.” 

Vax nodded. “That goes both ways.” He brushed his fingers along Gilmore’s jaw, kissing him again. “No more getting kidnapped and then not telling me for three days.” 

Gilmore offered an exhausted chuckle. “I’ll do my best.” 

Vax took his hand, holding it as he kissed Gilmore goodbye. “I love you, you glorious bastard.” 

“I love you, my dark-winged angel.” When Vax made a face at the new nickname, Gilmore laughed. “Go on.” He gave Vax a playful swat on the rump. “Before I change my mind and decide to keep you for the rest of the day.” 

Vax kissed his fingers before letting go of Gilmore's hand. Halfway to the castle, Vax looked back; Gilmore was still at the gate, watching him. It made Vax feel warm. 


End file.
